


say things like I want more

by mxingno



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: F/F, Fakeness (Discourse), Holding Hands, Songwriting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:58:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6134461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxingno/pseuds/mxingno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’re singing about something that all our fans everywhere will be able to relate to! Where <i>should</i> they go to hang out after school, Maki-chan? I don’t see you trying to help them decide.”</p><p>(in which Maki tries to write a song, and Nico tries to make a point.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	say things like I want more

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ultramariner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultramariner/gifts).



“It sounds weird,” says Nico, and it’s not even a little bit cute. It’s the voice she uses when they’ve pushed her past the limits of her persona, low and grumbling. “What are you doing to the piano? It doesn’t sound right.”  
   
Maki turns neatly on the piano stool, arms folded. “What do you expect, if you want me to compose some kind of – heavy metal thing? It’ll sound better on a guitar.”  
   
“So play it on a guitar!”  
   
“I can’t play the guitar – and you didn’t even let me get past the opening! You’re such a pain.” Her cheeks are getting hot; she’s always hated the way frustration looks on her, writ large and all-too-obvious on her face. “I don’t even know why you’re here.”  
   
Nico huffs. She’s slouching against the wall by the window, blocking the sun; it’s the only reason Maki hasn’t insisted she leave, though it’s definitely nothing more than an accident. It’s horrible, trying to play with the sun in your eyes. “Because, Maki-chan,” she says, with the air of a parent talking down to a child, “it’s an idol’s responsibility to make the whole world smile with her music. With her _charm._ And you just aren’t charming, Maki-chan! I have to supervise, because you’re a total grouch and you don’t understand my vision.”  
   
Maki knows better than to engage with someone who is clearly just spoiling for a fight. Why else would she have come, after all? Watching someone else compose hardly seems exciting enough to genuinely catch Nico’s attention, which Maki universally prefers; it’s a long process, repetitive and difficult and confined to whichever music practice room she’s been able to book out that evening, and it hardly helps to have a diminutive, ornery third-year trying to get in on the action. The point is, she knows better. She has been working with Nico for long enough that she definitely, at this stage in the game, knows how to rise above it.  
   
“Your vision,” she says flatly, disbelievingly, before the safety-net of that knowledge can catch her in flight.  
   
Nico draws herself up to her full (inadequate) height. “My vision! My vision for the song I want to sing with Rin-chan and Hanayo-chan—”  
   
“You are literally singing about eating cheeseburgers after school.”  
   
“We are _innovators,_ ” Nico insists. “We’re singing about something that all our fans everywhere will be able to relate to! Where _should_ they go to hang out after school, Maki-chan? I don’t see you trying to help them decide.”  
   
She is making it personal. Something boils in Maki’s blood, red-hot, and leaves her skin prickling. It’s not _fair,_ that’s what it is; it’s not fair that she should make this about something Maki hasn’t done, wouldn’t have known how to do – “It’s not as though you’re helping them, either! You just ask a lot of stupid questions to a stupid backing track full of stupid _metal._ ”  
   
“That’s because it’s relatable!” says Nico, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You don’t want to give advice to girls in that situation, Maki-chan – that wouldn’t be fun at all! It’d be like school. What you want is to make yourself seem real, like your life and your style and your absolute total _cuteness_ is something they can have, too, because you and the girls you’re singing with are real girls like them. That’s the Nico-name of the game, Maki-chan! And that’s my vision.”  
   
Maki shakes her head, hard; it feels like shaking water out of her hair, or shaking all this wrongness out of her mind. “But it’s fake! You barely ever hang out with Rin and Hanayo after school. You go home and look after your siblings.”  
   
“Which isn’t real to other girls,” Nico explains in a way that suggests she thinks she’s being patient. “So I don’t sing about it.”  
   
“But what you sing about isn’t real to _you._ ”  
   
“And?” Nico shrugs. All at once Maki’s on the back foot; she looks at Nico, really looks at her, in her cardigan and pigtails with a totally incongruous scowl on her face. Everything but the scowl is a costume, albeit not a glittery one. “It doesn’t have to be real to me. It doesn’t even have to be _really_ real to my millions and billions of fans – it just has to feel like it could be. Besides,” she adds, almost an afterthought, “at least I’ve thought it through. You’re just as fake as me, Maki-chan, and you don’t even know it.”  
   
Maki feels her face turning red, right to the tips of her ears, a blush that’s as guilty as it is indignant. “I am _not._ ”  
   
“Yes, you are, Maki-chan!” It’s not the same Nico, suddenly, not the same teasing sing-song voice she was speaking in before. It’s oddly, distressingly sincere. “You know none of us buy it, right? _Oh, Maki-chan’s so cool, Maki-chan’s so mature,_ when really, Maki-chan’s just like the rest of us!”  
   
There’s a faint ringing in her ears, high-pitched and insistent. (C sharp.) “Which is to say what?”  
   
Nico folds her arms. “A big nerd,” she pronounces, with the solemnity of a royal decree.  
   
“Is that it?” Maki draws herself up on the piano stool, back straight, posture perfect. “A big nerd? Obviously I like to study, and obviously I work hard, you all know that about me—”  
   
“No, no, no.” Nico shakes her head. “Not that kind of nerd. You’re just as silly as the rest of us are – that’s what I mean! You act like you’re so above it all, but you like to play games, too, and you like Honoka’s stupid jokes, and you like it when we have pillow-fights or Dance Dance Revolution tournaments or when you actually get to act like a kid for once. You _like_ that stuff. And the only reason you pretend you don’t is because you think it’s better to be too cool for it. You think it’s better to act like you’ve always been grown up.”  
   
She’s got a rebuttal for this. It’s in there, somewhere. She opens her mouth, searching for it, hoping it’ll spring to the tip of her tongue if she throws herself into her self-defence – but it doesn’t, it doesn’t even try, and she’s stuck gaping at Nico like a landed fish. “That isn’t fair,” she manages, after a moment that threatens to never end, but it’s weak and childish and she knows it. Perhaps it’s been weak and childish all along. “You aren’t being fair.”  
   
“It’s not a _bad_ thing!” says Nico, and there’s something of the way she talks to her siblings in it; Maki feels sick with frustration. “That’s what I’m saying, Maki-chan – I’m fake, too. Although obviously my kind of fakeness is super cute and charming, and yours is just kind of grouchy. It takes a whole lot of effort either way!”  
   
Maki takes a deep breath. It shudders in her throat, like it’ll turn into a scream if she only lets it go. “It _is_ better to be grown up, though. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”  
   
Nico shrugs, and slides down the wall to sit on the carpet. All at once there’s a dazzling light in Maki’s eyes, bright enough that it’s almost blinding. “It’s better to have fun. Or do whatever makes you feel better, I guess. If it makes you feel better, then keep at it, Maki-chan!”  
   
It does make her feel better, sort of; that’s the thing. When you are grown up then you get to be in control, you get to make decisions about what you want. When you are fifteen then you’re basically a joke. If she could get away with acting like a kid then she’d be someone else completely; she wouldn’t be Nishikino Maki, in her big house with her rich parents and her grand piano. Nishikino Maki, who has to be the best, who has to apply herself and turn her talents to the best possible use.

Nishikino Maki, who has to.

She looks down at the keyboard. If Nico would just get out already, she’d play something – play anything, make herself heard in a language she understands. Even if just to the birds outside the window. It all goes away when she plays the piano.  
   
“I wish you’d just go,” she mumbles, but her heart isn’t in it.  
   
“Yeah,” says Nico. Again, it’s not any kind of voice; it’s just Nico, strange and subdued, legs crossed, back to the wall. “I know.”  
   
A moment passes. Maki’s fingers feel like they’ve broken, like if she puts them to the keys then they’ll only say something wrong.  
   
“Come and sit here,” says Nico, “if you’re just going to sit.”  
   
There isn’t any point in _not_ going, she tells herself. It’s not as though she has a point to prove anymore; Nico has seen right through her. She doesn’t have anything to gain by bristling and declaring herself too good to sit on the carpet. She at least tries to sit down with some dignity, smoothing her skirt over her thighs, keeping her posture as correct as she can. Girls like Nico get to slouch. Girls like Maki have to sit like they belong.  
   
“I’m not joking, Maki-chan,” Nico offers. Like a gesture towards a truce. “If it makes you feel better, then just do it. If it helps you keep your spirits up then fake it as hard as you can! It’s not bad to do that. It’s not bad to do what makes you happier.”  
   
Maki thinks about Nico’s siblings, clattering around haphazardly in their apartment; Nico bringing home the groceries, cooking for everyone, dinner on the table when her mother finally gets home. She thinks about that concert they helped to put on for Cocoro and Cotaro and Cocoa, about the way their whole faces lit up with happiness to see their big sister take centre stage. She thinks about the way Kotori presented Nico with her costume, the way Nico nearly cried in the stairwell with gratitude. (Girls like Nico get to indulge their daydreams, singing and dancing and wearing pretty dresses. Girls like Maki have work to do.)  
   
“I don’t know,” she mumbles, and leans back against the wall. “Maybe it doesn’t.”  
   
Nico doesn’t say anything. She just takes Maki’s hand, as pretend-casually as if she’s a boy yawning and stretching until his arm just _happens_ to fall around his girlfriend’s shoulders. Except it’s not like that at all, because Nico laces their fingers together, and her hand is soft, and she’s not trying to pretend it was an accident, not really. She’s just not looking at Maki, staring straight ahead at the piano and the wall. Like it’s hard to acknowledge what she’s doing.  
   
Maki squeezes her hand. Only lightly, but it feels like something momentous; it feels like the scariest thing she’s ever done.  
   
Outside the sunlight is beginning to soften; buttercup-yellow rays of light fall through the windowpane to hit the stool and the keyboard, throwing motes of drifting dust into sharp relief. They don’t talk; it’s hard to say how long they don’t talk for. It would be wrong, Maki thinks, to put any words into whatever it is that’s between them. It would only muddle it. Better and safer and kinder to just sit in silence, hands joined; more sincere just to be close, and to try to understand.  
   
“Pass me the lyrics,” says Maki, after a small eternity has passed and the sunlight has faded to a sunset gold. “I want to try the melody again.”  
   
Nico grins, bright like a spotlight, and lets go of Maki to hand them back.

**Author's Note:**

> fic title taken from an English translation of 'After school NAVIGATORS'; vast and boundless gratitude to Lau, who enabled me.


End file.
